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Idiran Empire
The Idiran Empire was the crucial antagonists in Ian M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas. They were involved in a war over the course of the novel with the Culture, which ultimately ended in their defeat. The Culture and the Idiran Empire are at war in a galaxy-spanning conflict. Horza, a mercenary capable of altering his appearance at will (a Changer), is assigned the task of retrieving a dispossessed Culture Mind by his Idiran handlers. The Mind, while fleeing attacking Idirans who consider its existence an abomination, has taken refuge on Schar's World, a Planet of the Dead. Planets of the Dead are nominally forbidden to both the Culture and the Idirans, being under the control of god-like incorporeal beings called "Dra'Azon". Horza, however, was one of a group of Changers allowed to be on the planet as stewards and witnesses to its devastation. He may be the only person in the Galaxy, and certainly the only one known to the Idirans, who would be allowed to return. On the way to Schar's World he encounters, and joins, a band of mercenaries and pirates, led by Kraiklyn, on their ship, the Clear Air Turbulence. All the while he is doggedly pursued by a Culture Special Circumstances agent, Perosteck Balveda. The Culture also realizes that Horza is the key to getting to Schar's World and retrieving the Mind. Their plan is to place an agent with him and hope that the agent can get to the Mind first and somehow leave with it. Idirans and Allied Races The Idirans are a major galactic race, most known for their war against the Culture . By the time of Consider Phlebas, they are an aggressive but calculating warrior species which considers it their holy duty to bring order to the universe and its lesser races. Full-grown Idirans stand about three meters tall on a tripod of legs and have two arms. There is some hint of fully trilateral symmetry in their ancestry, as a third, vestigial, arm has evolved into a chest-flap which the Idirans use to create loud, booming warning signals. They have a saddle-shaped head with two eyes at each end of the saddle. Idirans are biologically immortal (or, more correctly, ageless) and are very resilient to physical damage as they are protected by a natural keratinous body-armour and can withstand catastrophic damage and even remain conscious, though they do not naturally regenerate. They are dual hermaphrodites, each half of a couple impregnating the other. After one or two pregnancies Idirans lose their fertility and develop into the warrior stage, reaching greater size and weight, the armour hardening fully. Idiran warriors are capable of taking enormous amounts of damage and can survive massive trauma that would kill a human being instantly-for example, losing a large fraction of their head. The biological immortality was a result of their evolution as the 'top monster on a planet full of monsters', where strong natural selection pressure and a strong background radiation (causing mutations) prevented the biological immortality from stifling the evolution of the species. Once the Idirans had tamed their environment they lived in peace and solitude for forty-five thousand years until they were almost made extinct by alien invaders. In response (and in reflection of their physical change from breeder to warrior), they turned into a warrior race and attempted to conquer and convert all other races in the galaxy to bring about the order their God desires (see 'Society' below). This successful and brutal expansion eventually resulted in the Idiran-Culture War. Their religious need to defend and hold once-conquered territory at all costs is described as having been part of their downfall, competing with the Culture's spaceborne flexibility. Idir, the homeworld of the species, was never conquered during the war, though the Culture succeeded in removing the artificial restraints holding back the development of the planet-wide information network, which then upgraded itself to sentience, 'becoming a Culture Mind in all but name'. This and the loss of the war itself precipitated major changes in Idiran society. The Idirans are a deeply religious people and believe in a single, rational God who wants a better existence for his creation. Everything in life has its place and it is desirable to bring about order by putting things into their right places. This belief developed while they were struggling for survival in the harsh and chaotic conditions of their home world. Idirans also believe that they are the only beings with immortal souls - as other species do not even possess biological immortality, they see no reason to assume they would possess the spiritual kind. In this way, they treat all other sentient races as similar to very intelligent pets.By the time of the later novels, the Idirans have become 'Culturized' to some degree, with some having joined Culture ships crews. Medjel The Medjel are a 'companion' (or slave) species to the Idirans. They originally evolved in a social symbiosis with the Idirans, who later bred them as a companion species over the course of forty thousand years (by the time of the Idiran-Culture War). They are reckoned to be about two thirds as intelligent as the average human. Outnumbering Idirans by about 12 to 1 but being genetically loyal to them, they provide good, if unimaginative, soldiers and servants. Physically, the medjel are about two metres long, with green-brown skin. They have flat, long heads with distinct muzzles, walk on four feet and use two front feet as hands. The tail of the military medjel is docked. Homomda The Homomda are a major galactic race, somewhat further advanced than the Culture, but not yet as removed from the material universe as the Dra'Azon or the Sublimed civilisations. They see themselves as acting as a balancing factor between other major races. The Homomda have a tripedal, pyramid-formed structure.[4] Among the history revealed about the Homomda is that they gave shelter to the 'Holy Remnants' of the Idiran species when they were driven from their world and almost made extinct by another species. They used the Idirans (who share similarities to their tripedal form) as elite mercenary troops and later helped them reconquer their homeworld and expand their own sphere of influence. In the Idiran-Culture War, they supported the Idirans against the Culture, due to a policy of trying to prevent one species (or group) from attaining too much influence in the galaxy, similar to real-world Great Britain before World War I. After sustaining heavy losses during the decades-long war - even with their ships being described as more powerful than most Culture ships (Appendices of Consider Phlebas) - they eventually struck a truce with the Culture and withdrew from the conflict. This was a major factor in the eventual Idiran defeat. In Look To Windward it is noted that the Homomda consider the Culture to be immature, impulsive - childish, in a word. However, the Homomda character central to the novel feels warmth for his Culture friends, and finds himself increasingly changing from an 'Ambassador' to a Culture citizen. Changers Changers, described in Consider Phlebas, are a pan-human subspecies genetically engineered as a weapon in the distant past by an unknown species. They are capable of impersonating any humanoid being of similar size by restructuring their body to resemble the individual. Changers have the ability to grow, shrink and mold their body as willed, changing everything from looks to actual muscles and bones, though most major changes - induced by a trance-like state - take several days. The impersonation is nearly perfect outwardly, making visual identification as an imposter almost impossible. They are even capable of modifying the genotype of the bulk of their cells to match that of another person through a virus based biological process, presumably maintaining their native genetic structure in protected stem cells for later renormalization.Changers also have conscious control of most of their bodily functions - these include the ability to produce copious amounts of sweat or small quantities of acid on their skin (useful for close combat or escaping from bonds, respectively), while the ability to shape their bone structure also allows them to slip through bonds if they have enough time.Changers also have various natural weapons, with their bite, spittle and nails containing poisons or acidic substances, and have perfected associated techniques in disguises, impersonation (psychological tactics as well as subconscious behaviour) and combat (assassination and self-defense) to improve their abilities. Because of the threat they pose to most humanoid societies that depend on appearance as a means of identity, the Changers are an almost universally reviled species, and are usually killed where found. By the time of Culture novels, they were isolated to a single large asteroid, known as Heibohre, where they lived in a clan system of paramilitary structure. Some left that world for various reasons, and by the time of the Idiran-Culture War, many were working for the Idirans, mostly out of a dislike for the Culture. The Changers were destroyed as a species in the later stages of the war. Technology Anti-gravity and forcefields The Idirans (and other societies) have developed powerful anti-gravity abilities, closely related to their ability to manipulate forces themselves. In this ability they can create action-at-a-distance – including forces capable of pushing, pulling, cutting, and even fine manipulation, and forcefields for protection, visual display or plain destructive ability. Such applications still retain restrictions on range and power: while forcefields of many cubic kilometres are possible (and in fact, orbitals are held together by forcefields), even in the chronologically later novels, such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_to_Windward Look to Windward], spaceships are still used for long-distance travel and drones for many remote activities. With the control of a Mind, fields can be manipulated over vast distances. In "Use of Weapons", a Idirans warship uses its electromagnetic effectors to hack into a computer light years away. Starships and warp drives As an almost fully space-borne Idirans, starships (next to orbitals) are the main living spaces, vehicles and ambassadors of the Idirans. A proper Idirans starship (as defined by hyperspace capability and the presence of a Mind to inhabit it) may range from several hundreds of metres to several dozens of kilometres. The latter may be inhabited by billions of beings and are artificial worlds in their own right, including whole ecosystems. The Idirans (and most other space-faring species in its universe) use a form of Hyperspace-drive to achieve faster-than-light speeds. Banks has evolved a (self-confessedly) technobabble system of theoretical physics to describe the ships' acceleration and travel, using such concepts as "infraspace" and "ultraspace" and an 'energy grid' between universes (from which the warp engines 'push off' to achieve momentum). An 'induced singularity' is used to access infra or ultra space from real space; once there, 'engine fields' reach down to the Grid and gain power and traction from it as they travel at high speeds. These hyperspace engines do not use reaction mass and hence do not need to be mounted on the surface of the ship. They are described as being very dense exotic matter, which only reveals its complexity under a powerful microscope. Acceleration and maximum speed depend on the ratio of the mass of the ship to its engine mass. As with any other matter aboard, ships can gradually manufacture extra engine volume or break it down as needed. In Excession one of the largest ships of the Idirans redesigns itself to be mostly engine and reaches a speed of 233,000 times lightspeed. Within the range of the Idirans's influence in the galaxy, most ships would still take years of travelling to reach the more remote spots. Other than the engines used by larger Idirans ships, there are a number of other propulsion methods such as gravitic drive at sublight speeds, with antimatter, fusion and other reaction engines occasionally seen with less advanced civilizations, or on Idirans hobby craft. Warp engines can be very small, with Idirans drones barely larger than fist-size described as being thus equipped. There is also at least one (apparently non-sentient) species (the "Chuy-Hirtsi" animal), that possesses the innate capability of warp travel. In Consider Phlebas, it is being used as a military transport by the Idirans, but no further details are given. Wars The Idiran-Culture War is a major fictional conflict between the Idiran Empire and the Culture in the midst of which Iain M. Banks' science fiction novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas Consider Phlebas] is set. His later book, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_to_Windward Look to Windward], contains many references to the war: particularly the induced supernovae of two stars, which resulted in the death of billions of sentient creatures. References to the war can also be found in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession Excession], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(novel) Matter] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail Surface Detail]. It has been commented that the Idiran-Culture war, with its juxtaposition of a religiously fanatic species fighting (and eventually succumbing to) the atheistic Culture, shows the author's theme of "antipathy to religious belief, although nominally not to the believers". The commentator also refers to the war as a clash of civilizations in the sense of Samuel P. Huntington.[1] According to Banks' appendices to Consider Phlebas, the war began in 1327 AD, and continued for 48 years and one month, resulting in an eventual but total victory for the Culture. The conflict was one of principles; the Culture went to war because the Idirans' fanatical imperial expansion, justified on religious grounds, threatened the Culture's "moral right to exist". As the Culture saw it, the Idirans' extending sphere of influence would prevent them from improving the lives of those in less-advanced societies, and thus would greatly curtail the Culture's sense of purpose. As is the case with all major decisions, the decision on the part of the Culture to go to war was through direct vote of the entire population. Academics who have analysed Bank's universe in comparison with real-world political thought have remarked that the decision of the Culture to go to war was a moral choice, rather than one of necessity, as the Culture could have easily avoided war.[2] The Idirans' decision to go to war is described as being founded in their philosophical, moral and religious distaste for the almost symbiotic nature of the Culture and the threat that their artificial intelligences were considered to be posing to the primacy and significance of biological life in the universe. Such fears were also found in many of those who supported the Idiran side during the war, as exemplified by Horza, the protagonist in Consider Phlebas. As Horza, a mercenary for the Idirans observes: "the conflict was inevitable"; the Idirans would not halt their expansion, because their faith wouldn't allow it; the Culture was so ill-defined, having no borders or laws, that it would also have grown ceaselessly. The two cultures would have been unlikely to forge a peaceful co-existence. Course of the war The initial stages of the war were defined by a hasty withdrawal of the Culture from vast galactic spaces invaded by the Idirans, who tried to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible in the hope of making the Culture sue for peace. However, the Culture was able - often by bodily moving its artificial worlds out of harm's way - to escape into the vastness of space, while it in turn geared up its productive capabilities for war, eventually starting to turn out untold numbers of extremely advanced warships. This transformation provides a story backdrop in which the 'soft', hedonistic Culture is suddenly realised as standing up for their convictions. Initial stages of the conflict consisted of encounters in space, with Machine casualties (in the form of Drones and Modules of the Culture, and AI weapons of Idir) being the first losses of the war. During the process of consolidation of territories and volumes by both the Culture and Idir, warfare was initially limited to proxy warfare on selected planets, and the employment of mercenaries on both sides in order to use worlds at low levels of development as experimental laboratories for testing ideologies. Most proxy warfare was inconclusive, though it was coupled with the expansion of the Idiran Sphere. The later stages of the war began with Culture strikes deep within the new Idiran zones of influence. As the Idirans were religiously committed to holding on to all of their conquests, these strikes forced them to divide their attentions. They were eventually overwhelmed by the Culture, a civilization they had not considered as having the requisite will to fight. Factors involved in the Culture victory were the vast productive capacities implied in its post-scarcity economy, its advanced technological level, and its superior war planning, all largely due to capabilities of Minds, the artificial sentiences leading the Culture. The final stages of the war involved increasingly desperate attempts by the Idirans to stave off their defeat, the withdrawal of the Homomdan from the Idiran side (after suing for a separate peace with the Culture), and the confinement of the Idirans to limited, carefully watched zones. Casualties Total casualties amounted to 851.4±25.5 (0.3%) billion sentient creatures, including medjel (slaves of the Idirans), sentient machines and non-combatants, and wiped out various smaller species, including the Changers. The war resulted in the destruction of 91,215,660 (±200) starships above interplanetary, 14,334 orbitals, 53 planets and major moons, 1 ring and 3 spheres, as well as the significant mass-loss or sequence-position alteration of 6 stars.[3] Despite the relatively small scale, in comparison with the rumoured conflicts of the past as referred to by the sublimed species of the galaxy, the Idiran-Culture war is considered one of the more significant events in (Iain M. Banks') galactic history. Category:Enemy Faction Category:Ian M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas Category:The Culture series Category:The Culture Government